“Da,” Searrach wept.
“It’s all right,” Harrell soothed, changing tactics. “A simple task. Go straight there and back. He’ll be easy to find.” Harrell half-carried, half-shoved her to the edge of the green, toward the house from which Finley and Kirsten watched, then pried his daughter away from him.
The women ducked down beneath the window as the townspeople turned to watch, and Harrell’s last murmured instructions wafted through the opening.
“Go, me lass. Quick as ye can. Thomas Annesley willna be found, but Hargrave won’t care about that if he has Lachlan.”
“But what do I tell him, Da?” Searrach whined. “He knows I doona want him.”
“Tell him…tell him it’s his brother, then,” Harrell suggested. “Tell him Dand’s hurt bad. It’ll like as nae be true,” he added in an ominous tone.
“Da?”
“Doona worry about it, gel. Quick as ye can, now. It’ll be over soon enough, and we shall have everything we want.”
Finley heard footsteps walking away, but dared not look out the window just yet. It didn’t really matter to her now, though, what went on on the green. She climbed down from the chair, prompting Kirsten to follow. They both paused at the door.
“What are you doing?” Kirsten breathed.
“We’re going after Searrach,” she said. “She canna be allowed to lure Lachlan here with lies. He must know the truth of what’s happening at Town Blair.”
“But…Dand,” Kirsten whispered. “I canna leave when—”
“What will you do for him here, Kirsten?” Finley demanded. “Watch him be killed?”
“Fin!”
“If we can overtake Searrach and warn everyone ourselves, we might have a chance to stop this whole thing from happening. You especially know the fastest way through the woods.”
“They’ve taken the Blairs’ weapons; they’ll be no aid.”
Finley just stared at her. “Think you Lachlan will be frightened of that? Think you the Carsons will be either? You heard as well as I: that man—that Lord Hargrave—is the one who burned Carson Town thirty years ago. And from what we heard his guards say, I don’t think there is much chance the Blairs will come out as fortunate as before. He’s going to kill them all, Kirsten, not just Dand. This time, I say it should be he who is taken by surprise.”
Kirsten’s gentle brown eyes smoldered in the shadows for a long moment, and then she nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”
* * * *
By the time Lachlan returned to the old cliff house, the bonfire had been abandoned, the mountainous pile of fuel spent. A tall ring of protective rock walled in the thick bed of coals and ashes, allowing the rippling glow to do what it would. Lachlan stood on the edge of the fire he had helped kindle what seemed years ago now, soaking in the warmth pulsing from the ring.
Myra Carson…Myra Annesley. Thomas Annesley. Edna Blair.
Lachlan.
Rather than show Lachlan a clear path back to Town Blair, the information he’d learned about Thomas Annesley’s connection to Carson Town had only thrust him deeper into the wilderness. He turned toward the old house, tired to his bones, unable to think any longer.
He was only halfway across the ceiling-less entry chamber when he saw the flicker of his own fire in the doorway, which caused him to stop in his tracks, the hair on his neck raising. He hadn’t been back to the old house since this morning. He could feel eyes on him. Lachlan turned in a slow circle, looking up and all around him, but he could neither see nor hear anyone else. There could only be one person brave and careful enough to come into Lachlan’s home.
“Edna’s son,” the voice called to him from the storeroom.
Lachlan crossed the floor swiftly and found the strange, shriveled man sitting on the edge of the pallet, an ancient leather skull cap covering his head. His knobby fingers were laced together on his lap atop his old, long tunic; his roeskin boots were tied around his ankles like sacks.
It was as if he had readied himself for a journey.
“Yer verra late, Edna’s son,” Geordie said. “I thought I’d have to find ye.” He stood up, his gangly arms now hanging at his sides. “It’s time for us to go now.”
Lachlan stared at the man for a long moment. “Go where, Geordie?”
“Back.”
